*Ray Donovan’*s Liev Schreiber on His New L.A. Life and Feeling “Desperate to Go Home and Hang Out with the Boys and Naomi”

A football star awakens after a night of hard partying. In bed next to him? A dead woman, naked and covered in blood. That’s where Ray Donovan, title character of Showtime’s latest series (premiering Sunday), comes in. A Hollywood fixer who left behind a storied past in Boston, Donovan must now find the balance between devotion to the family and the life he’s built out West.

Embodying the character of Donovan is actor, producer, and director Liev Schreiber. The former theater beast phoned the Hollywood Blog mid–road trip to chat about life in L.A., missing his family, and what scared him the most about taking on television for the first time.**

The Hollywood Blog:__ Where in the world are we finding you right now?__

Liev Schreiber: I’m in the desert.

Oh my!

____Yes. I am in the desert. Making my way back to the airport so I can go home.

And is home L.A. or New York these days?

Home is New York.

You’re so well known for your work in theater and film. Why make the jump to TV now?

____I have no idea. Seriously. I didn’t intend to, you know? I didn’t want to do it. I read the pilot, and I really liked it a lot. I thought it was very interesting. I wanted to meet the writer, Ann Biderman. We have some friends in common, and my agent said, You should meet her. I said I didn’t think it was a good idea if I met her, because if I met her she would talk me into doing the show. I just wanted to meet her because I wanted to maybe develop some things with her.

Right.

Long story short, I met her, and next thing I knew I was starting to build my life around doing this show in Los Angeles for five months of the year.

What does that mean for you? You have your whole life here in New York, and two young kids. And this show has the potential to be on for many years.

____We are working it out still. We really don’t know what to expect. It is just one of those things where you have to trust the process, and hopefully Naomi and the kids will want to spend some time in L.A. At least that is what I am hoping.

How is L.A. treating you versus New York? I feel like you are the epitome of a New Yorker.

I’ve got nothing against L.A. I think it is a really beautiful place. To be able to surf and get out in the Pacific Ocean every once in a while. The hiking, all of that is amazing. I love it there. Just that, given my schedule, things can get a little isolated and a little lonely at times. Which was kind of appropriate for the character, I guess.

How has it been working with Jon Voight and the rest of the cast?

I’ll be honest. I was really nervous going into this. I didn’t know what I was doing. All I knew was that I trusted Ann, and I trusted the people that I met at Showtime. I was pretty scared. And in the back of my mind I was thinking, No one is going to want to hire you. This is a good thing to do, so just grin and bear it. I started to sit down with Ann and talk about the kind of actors she wanted to hire, and I started to feel a lot better.

It was just such an amazing cast. To be able to work again with Jon, to work with Paula Malcomson and Dash Mihok, who has always been a friend. I think he’s a super, super actor. Especially Eddie Marsan, he’s someone I have admired for a really long time. What I learned is it’s about the company and the writers getting together and really working together in a very intimate way that makes this thing work. That’s the thing I probably came away most happy about, was the relationships I developed in the ensemble and how solid I think our cast is.

Your character, Ray Donovan, has such a checkered past. But as a viewer, you can’t help but like him. Do you think that audiences will be able to relate to him?

I hope so. I don’t know. I have never believed that what you should be thinking about is creating a likable character. I think conflicted characters are always more interesting. In all great dramatic literature, it is the duality that makes something work, and I think that is something that Showtime really believes in as well. You see a lot of antiheros in their characters in their shows. I think Ray . . . has a strong moral epicenter beneath all of his shit.

____How hard was it to nail down that Boston accent? Because it is pretty damn good.

____Thank you. I went to school in Massachusetts at Hampshire College. There was a guy I hung out with who was from Dorchester . . .

And that helped?

Yeah. We also had some excellent dialect coaches.

So you guys just wrapped shooting the first season. What’s up next? Can we expect a return to theater?

I am just desperate to go home and hang out with the boys and Naomi. It was pretty grueling to shoot, and I’m tired. I want to see how people respond to the show. We worked pretty hard for a long time, so I am excited for the reaction, so I’m not even thinking about what to do next.